Stone Brewing’s beers are now officially in Ireland. And it’s ultra awesome. Long gone are the days where we were only getting grey-market Stone beers (I was a regular buyer of Levitation when I could find it here – and I spent some insane money buying that beer). In the void after the grey market beers disappeared, I’ve had to make do with getting my Stone fix directly from BrewDog’s online store, so I could keep my stock of Arrogant Bastard up & plentiful. This year, Stone Brewing Berlin opened, & fresh beers brewed in Berlin have found their way to mass European distribution, with Four Corners handling things for Ireland. When I’ve been in off-licenses and had people ask me to recommend a beer amidst general beer chit-chat, I’ve pointed them to Stone & been asked “So who are Stone?”

I make zero; Z-E-R-O, apologies for my love of Stone Brewing. Arrogant Bastard forever changed my view of craft beer (after Sierra Nevada’s Torpedo sent me hurrying down the lupulin path like my ass was on fire). Stone Brewing is my beery spirit animal. Whether it was Stone Pale Ale, or something like w00tStout (which I’ve a stock of still – and no, they’re NOT for sale!!!!) I’ve a genuine love for their beers as they produce my kind of beers. Even their chili-fanatic ‘Cryme’ & ‘Punishment’ beers which have forever become my chili beer barometers as I’m as big a chili fanatic as I am a hophead. My instagram is like a hommage to them at this point

Now, I could harp on about Stone, but I think a better introduction to them is their CEO, Greg Koch’s talk given at Google HQ in 2012:

Greg Koch is one of the most interesting people I’ve ever met in the beer world. The guy is so happy to make time for those he meets to talk beer & slow food. And when they announced Stone coming to Berlin, I was apoplectically happy:

Right now, the beer range we’ll get in Ireland for the forseeable future while the Brewery ramps up & builds its market here in Europe will be:

• Stone IPA (it’s not the original but a much tweaked modern version which is still massively hop aggressive by modern IPA standards)
• Stone GoTo IPA (THIS is the new bar for 4-5% IPAs in Europe as far as I’m concerned)
• Stone Cali Belgique (Stone’s Quasi-Belgian-American IPA)
• Stone Arrogant Bastard (THE GrandDaddy of craft beers as far as I’m concerned)
• Stone Ruination Double IPA (this is the 2.0 version, which is an EPIC upgrade of the original, which was a real mouth smasher)

I am so happy my favorite brewery in the world now has their beers available here & they’re as fresh as it gets too. It’s a massively hoppy & happy time to be a craft beer drinker in Ireland.